“If you like, I can wait,” said the driver. “It’s going to be pretty difficult finding another taxi in these parts. This is the middle of nowhere.”

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“Don’t worry,” said Wicca, to Brida’s relief. “We always get what we want.”

The driver gave them a strange look and drove off. They were standing before a grove of trees that extended as far as the foot of the nearest mountain.

“Ask permission to enter,” said Wicca. “The spirits of the forests always appreciate good manners.”

Brida asked permission. The wood, which had, up until then, been just an ordinary wood, seemed suddenly to come to life.

“Stay on the bridge between the visible and the invisible,” said Wicca while they walked among the trees. “Everything in the Universe has life, and you must always try to stay in contact with that life. It understands your language. And the world will begin to take on a different meaning for you.”

Brida was surprised at Wicca’s agility. Her feet seemed to levi-tate above the ground, making almost no noise.

They reached a clearing, near a huge stone. While she tried to think how that stone could have got there, Brida noticed the ashes from a fire right in the middle of the open space.

It was a beautiful place. It would still be some hours before evening, and the sun shone with the warm gold of summer afternoons. Birds were singing, and a light breeze rustled in the leaves.

They were quite high up, and she could look across and down at the horizon.

Wicca took a kind of cloak out of her bag and put it on over her clothes. Then she placed the bag near the trees, so that it couldn’t be seen from the clearing.

46

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“Sit down,” she said.

Wicca was somehow different. Brida couldn’t decide whether it was the cloak or the profound respect that the place inspired in her.

“First of all, I must explain what I’m going to do. I’m going to find out how the Gift manifests itself in you. I can only begin to teach you once I know something about your Gift.”

Wicca asked Brida to try and relax, to surrender herself to the beauty of the place, just as she had when she had surrendered to the tarot cards.

“At some point in one of your past lives, you set out along the road of magic. I know this from the tarot visions that you described.”

Brida closed her eyes, but Wicca asked her to open them again.

“Magical places are always beautiful and deserve to be contemplated. Waterfalls, mountains, and forests are all places where the spirits of Earth tend to play and laugh and speak to us. You are in a sacred place, and it is showing you the birds and the wind.

Thank God for this, for the birds, the wind, and for the spirits who inhabit this wood. Always stay on the bridge between the visible and the invisible.”

Wicca’s voice was making Brida feel more and more relaxed.

She felt an almost religious respect for the moment.

“The other day, I spoke to you about one of the great secrets of magic: the Soul Mate. The whole of man’s life on the face of Earth can be summed up by that search for his Soul Mate. He

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may pretend to be running after wisdom, money, or power, but none of that matters. Whatever he achieves will be incomplete if he fails to find his Soul Mate.

“With the exception of a few creatures who are descended from the angels—and who need solitude in order to encounter God—the rest of humanity will only achieve Union with God if, at some point, at some moment in their life, they manage to commune with their Soul Mate.”

Brida noticed a strange energy in the air. For a few moments, and for some reason she could not explain, her eyes filled with tears.

“In the Night of Time, when we were separated, one of those parts was charged with nurturing and maintaining knowledge: man. He went on to understand agriculture, nature, and the movements of the stars in the sky. Knowledge was always the power that kept the Universe in its place and the stars turning in their orbits.

That was the glory of man—to nurture and maintain knowledge.

And that is why the whole human race has survived.

“To women was given something far more subtle and fragile, but without which knowledge makes no sense at all, and that thing was transformation. The men left the soil fertile, we sowed seeds, and the soil was transformed into trees and plants.

“The soil needs the seed, and the seed needs the soil. The one only has meaning with the other. It is the same thing with human beings. When male knowledge joins with female transformation, then the great magical union is created, and its name is Wisdom.

Wisdom means both to know and to transform.”

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P a u l o C o e l h o

Brida noticed that the wind was growing stronger and that Wicca’s voice was leading her again into a trance. The spirits of the forest seemed alive and intent.

“Lie down,” said Wicca.

Brida leaned back and stretched out her legs. Up above her glowed a deep, blue, cloudless sky.

“Go in search of your Gift. I can’t go with you today, but don’t be afraid. The more you understand yourself, the more you will understand the world. And the closer you will be to your Soul Mate.”

Wicca knelt down and looked at the young woman. “She’s just as I once was,” she thought fondly. “In search of a meaning for everything and capable of looking at the world as did the strong, confident women of old, who were quite happy to rule over their own communities.”

At that time, however, God had been a woman. Wicca bent over Brida’s body and unbuckled the belt of Brida’s jeans, then half-unzipped them. Brida’s muscles tensed.

“Don’t worry,” said Wicca affectionately.

She lifted up Brida’s T-shirt to reveal her navel. Then she took from the pocket of her cloak a quartz crystal and placed it on Brida’s navel.

“Now I want you to close your eyes,” she said softly. “I want you to imagine the color of the sky, but keep your eyes closed.”

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